In the ensuing action, British warships stopped and rammed the Exodus. Three passengers were killed and 145 injured. The refugees were removed from the vessel and returned to the German detention camps from which they had come.
"All this effort, all this agony, and they were going back to Germany," Mr. Schloss recalled in a 1997 article in The Sun commemorating the event.
During the postwar years, Industrial Sales Co., which later changed its name to INDUSCO, expanded its operations under Henry Schloss' leadership.
FOR THE RECORD - An obituary published for Henry "Sonny" Schloss misnamed the vessel that became the Exodus in 1947. It was the Old Bay Line steamer President Warfield.
The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.
Mr. Schloss was also credited with introducing in 1954 a German splicing machine that replaced splicing wire cable by hand and could produce 10 cables in the time it took to make one using the former method.
After a 1960 fire destroyed its former facility, the company moved to its current plant on West Hamburg Street.
Mr. Schloss became president and CEO of the company in 1971 after the death of his father.
"He turned a three-man operation into a nationally respected firm during his tenure. He was an outgoing man and always forward-looking," his son said. "And like his father, he had a reputation for fairness and kindness, and he worked hard at keeping that family-owned-business feeling."
"Old Mr. Schloss was very committed to remaining in the state, and Henry carried out that commitment to the hilt and in doing so helped the port of Baltimore thrive," Helen Delich Bentley, the former congresswoman and chairwoman of the Federal Maritime Commission, who had been maritime editor of The Sun, said yesterday.
Mr. Schloss served as vice president and later president of the Baltimore Zionist District. He had been active in campaigns of the Associated Jewish Charities and Welfare Fund. He also had been an active member of the Baltimore Committee for State of Israel Bonds.
He was a Mason and a member of Oheb Shalom Congregation.
"Henry was a gentleman, a very strong family man and a top-flight citizen," said retired Baltimore Circuit Judge Edgar P. Silver. "He was very proud of his heritage and Judaism."
He enjoyed boating and golf, and spent winters at a second home in Palm Beach.
His wife of 66 years, the former Bernice Roseman, died this year.
Services for Mr. Schloss were Friday.
Also surviving are two daughters, Emily Singer of Owings Mills and Leslie Goldman of Pikesville; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
